Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
— — a red that holds the winter.
Not only on a wall.
“The Red Building stands on Volodymyrska, in central Kyiv. Vincenzo Beretti drew it in the 1830s and the masons finished the work in 1842. The colour is oxblood, applied at the order of the tsar and never repainted to anything else. Generations of students have crossed Shevchenko Park to its doors, including the poet the university now carries the name of.
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv was founded in 1834 by decree of Tsar Nicholas I as the Imperial University of Saint Vladimir, the third university in the Russian Empire. The Red Building, the main administrative seat, sits on Volodymyrska Street in central Kyiv across from Shevchenko Park. Italian-Swiss architect Vincenzo Beretti designed the building in late-classical style; construction finished in 1842. The university was renamed for the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko in 1939 on the 125th anniversary of his birth, and is the country's largest and oldest classical university, with sixteen faculties spread across the city.
The walls are oxblood red, and have been since the building opened. The story passed down on the philology corridor is that Tsar Nicholas I chose the colour himself as a sign of the bloodied loyalty he expected from Polish students after the November Uprising of 1830-31. The black cast-iron details — railings, lintels, the high spear-tip fence — match the order of Saint Vladimir. The combination reads as a single piece of civic uniform that the snow of January only sets off more clearly.
The Red Building is the administrative and ceremonial centre of the university and not normally open to walk-in tourists; the main classrooms operate behind security since 2022. The building is best seen from across the street, by the Shevchenko monument in the park, with the cast-iron fence and the rusticated ground floor in the same frame. The Universytet station on the M1 metro line takes its name from the campus and is a five-minute walk away. The university operates over 30,000 students across more than a dozen sites in Kyiv.